Repeated attacks by Hizballah on Israel from an area known as Shaba Farms have heightened tensions between Israel and the powers behind the Islamic militia - Lebanon and Syria.
Israel has threatened to strike hard at those who back Hizballah, and analysts believe that Syrian interests or troops based in Lebanon could be the target.
The assessment of Israel's military establishment is that the new Syrian president, Bashar Assad, is either unwilling or unable to rein in Hizballah.
Until now, Israel's reactions have been restrained. But recently the U.S. warned Syria that Israel's patience was wearing thin and it had better act against Hizballah.
"It would be a big mistake to underestimate Israel's willingness to defend its interests," U.S. Ambassador to Israel Martin Indyk said in a speech in Baltimore, Maryland on Sunday.
"There's a real danger [of military confrontation] if Hizballah is not restrained."
Indyk said the Arab world has been considering the option of resorting to a military action recently. Referring to Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's recent saber rattling as well as the Hizballah attacks, Indyk said these actions posed "a very dangerous challenge to the peace process."
At the beginning of the current conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, Iraq moved troops toward the Jordanian border - Jordan lies between Iraq and Israel - and called on fellow Arab nations to allow him access to a piece of land from which to launch an attack on Israel.
Although Arab leaders were not overly impressed, Hussein did succeed in stirring up public opinion among Arab masses in favor of fighting a war against Israel.
When Israel withdrew its troops from southern Lebanon in May, a United Nations survey team agreed that because Israel had captured the Shaba Farms area from Syria in the 1967 Six Day War and not from Lebanon, they should not be handed over to Lebanon.
Hizballah rejected the decision and vowed to continue to fight Israel until the land was handed over. Moreover, Hizballah vowed to continue to fight all the way to Jerusalem.
Last week, an Israeli soldier was killed a half mile inside Israeli territory by a roadside bomb planted by Hizballah. In October, three Israeli soldiers were abducted and taken to Lebanon, while U.N. peacekeepers watched. Their fate remains unknown.
On Tuesday, the U.N. special envoy to the Middle East, Terje-Roed Larsen, warned that the Israeli-Palestinian clashes could easily have a "spillover affect in the region" and in a worst-case scenario spark a regional war.
Several Arab newspapers, which generally reflect official policy, have stepped up rhetoric against Israel and the U.S.
A Saudi newspaper warned Israel on Tuesday that a Middle East war would rally the Arab masses to fight against the Jewish state.
A regional war "will not be short and will not be limited to regular armies, because it will lead to an Arab resistance different from that known in previous wars," the Al-Riyadh newspaper wrote.
"Israel failed to defeat the Lebanese resistance, just as it is going through the nightmare of the Palestinian intifada [uprising]," it continued.
Arabs viewed Israel's withdrawal from Lebanon as a victory for Hizballah's prolonged guerrilla warfare campaign.
Al-Riyadh maintained that the Israeli-PA violence had proved to the U.S. that the Arab masses were united behind the Palestinians and "that public opinion in the region had [not] been neutralized by the successive failures of [Arab] military and political plans."
The Syrian daily Al-Baath blamed Israel for a policy it said was threatening to drag the region into a new war. If the U.S. was worried about a new confrontation, it said, then Washington should put pressure on Israel.
The Jordanian paper Al-Arab al-Youm said Israel's threats to strike at Syria and Lebanon grew from Prime Minister Ehud Barak's inability to ensure security and stability in his country.
The newspaper also strongly criticized the U.S. stance and said Washington had lost its credibility in the peace "process."
An Iranian daily al-Wifak slammed Israel for threatening to take action against Syria and Lebanon and accused the U.S. of foreknowledge of Israel's intentions because it had conveyed the warning to Syria.
Back in Israel, a young man working in a Jerusalem pizza parlor put it simply: "I don't like to say it. We're going to have a war. I feel it when I wake up. It's in the air," he said.
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